Dark Mutterings from Drumsleet

Robert Burns

2012-01-25T22:43:00.002Z

Laid off about this before. Down with the sentimentalisation and trivialisation of one of our greatest radical writers. Down with the once a year Scotsmen who snigger about his drinking and womanising,who

"explode like this once a year.
The rest of the time
these man are sober

rotarians. Unionists. And that apart,
wouldn’t know a poem
if it bit them on the arse."

Hurrah for the bravery of the man himself,risking transportation or death to put forward his views of liberty and equality.

I Murder Hate

I murder hate by flood or field,
Tho' glory's name may screen us;
In wars at home I'll spend my blood-
Life-giving wars of Venus.
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I'm better pleas'd to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty.

My Ma

2012-01-24T22:04:00.004Z

The picture doesn't do her justice, don't think, but today would have been my Ma's
91st birthday. The day before Burns'.

My Mother’s Dictionary

The pages curl back from arcane
all the way to chabazite
and a paper black with anagrams,
epsils, sepisle, sleep is, sleep is.
Some words are marked.
Otherness in bold red pen, tutelage.
Near Spring, there’s a parchment of a leaf.
In the margin by violin,
the name O’ Brien,
mysteriously underlined.
Fanning the pages is to breathe her in,
to the point you can imagine her, witchcraft,
by that roaring fire again, smoke curling,
words circling her legs like cats.

2012

2012-01-08T10:00:00.005Z

The new year finds me in reflective mood, as the screams of sleepover weans recede into the distance and a long term of wage slavery beckons with the mornings as dark still as the evenings and the wind rattling the windowpanes all down the Glen.

I hope we all have a good year, folks, all the best to you. Here are some christmas downloads and a newish poem.

Starcat

Every Saturday morning
we meet, my daughter and I,
to study form. She has a plain scone,
sometimes an empire biscuit.
I have coffee. I used to have an egg roll
but she didn’t like the way it ran
yellow onto the napkin.
After a moment or two she’ll
put on her latest pair of glasses
give a slight frown and get to it.
Stars are good, Elektra Star, Mystery Star,
but cats are best, Kenya Cat, Lightning Cat,
Son of Cat. How the pair of us rejoiced
when Starcat was on the card at Ascot,
an alchemy just for us it seemed,
a totemic and irresistible blend
of the cosmic and the cute.
Stars are usually eighth, cats more spry
but still well down the field.
Starcat lost, its life in fact.
I say it has retired and today is eating grass
in the verdant field of our imagining,
a place where people of differing ages come,
to watch horses take wing,
and two bob make a thousand pounds.

The Big Burns Supper

2011-12-15T22:45:00.005Z

Interesting that this collection of events commemorating, supposedly, our National Poet has no input from any contemporary writers in Dumfries and Galloway. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at this. Burns Suppers have always been the preserve of people who imagine a love of literature when their real interest is in perpetuating myth, or a particular view of history, or a sentimentalised idea of what it means to be Scottish once a year, or in this case, trying to make some money and attract some visitors. Writers just write though, don't they? Other people do the gimmicks.

Hmmm bit jaundiced that, now I read it in the cold light of a snowy Friday morning. Nothing wrong with different ways of celebrating Burns who was a great and courageous writer, after all. And nothing wrong with a bit of entrepreunerial ambition. Nevertheless poor Rabbie always provides a carcass to feed on, doesn't he?
And if the annual Burns hooh-hah proves anything he proves that we have a long and great tradition of poetry in Scotland. And that poets are still ignored, as they were then.

"once a year within a phantom nation
they shrink your head to fit a social occasion"

Willie Neill

Matlock, Tosh, Brent and Ladies

2011-11-18T13:55:00.007Z

Shug, waistline distorted by some photographic quirk, surely

Matlock Bath

Hot on the heels of last weekends first leg of my 'Anti-English Tour of England' in Matlock Bath I returned home for the reopening of the Salon at Thomas Tosh last Tuesday. There was a packed house, free wine and good readings, from JoAnne MacKay, Alan Gillespie and myself. Very good night. Surprised myself by the number of new poems I had. I suppose the main thing is to keep writing, isn't it? The Muse is still here, and so is the writing.

Not alas for Brent Hodgson the Ayrshire makar who died last week. Brent was a totally quirky inventor of a bizarre synthetic Scots and wrote poems which were perfectly accomplished but also hugely funny,

'HELLO MAISTER SMYTH'
by Brent Hodgson

Hello, Maister Smyth,
Yow suld be att hame
Puttand yowr dennar on.
Yow suld nocht be lyggand thair,
Warslyng with a python.

He'll be sorely missed. Such a combination of eccentricity, charm and rancour is rare. Goodbye, Brent.

Tales from the Tartan Bunnet are few though I was saddened to hear that Thistlemilk Entrepreneur Theosyphillis Neill's attempt to buy the Comet chain of shops for £2 so he could take a couple of DVDs down to Cash Converter every Friday night failed at the last moment, as a result of him failing to borrow the necessary £2.

Finally I'm reprinting a poem (is it a poem?)here by special request.

Thornhill Ladies

Thornhill ladies have no dots or stripes on a Saturday,
they have torques.
Thornhill ladies have hair specially made
from steel.
Thornhill ladies peel the epidermis from their butter
like surgeons.
Thornhill ladies eat their scones without opening their mouths
even once.
Thornhill ladies see your future in the steam from
their spicy carrot soup.
Thornhill ladies are sorry to disturb your lunch,
but wonder why you’ve not been eaten,
by your mate.

The Aspirational Target icon

2011-10-07T13:53:00.004+01:00

My National Poetry Day poem is a teeches only, I'm afraid, or at least they'll understand it best if they've ever filled in a report using a system called Seemis, where you're asked to choose from an range of icons, unlock the padlock, and launch your information. My favourite icon's the Aspirational Target Icon.

The Aspirational Target Icon

The Aspirational Target Icon
is nineteenth from the left.
It’s a long way off, like Madagascar.
Unlike the Initial Target Football Icon
which sits smugly waiting to be struck
into the corner of some other metaphor,
it seems like will o wisp, as intangible
as a shaft of pure green light from clouds.
Through the shrouds of blind
the last of summer sets fire to stone
and roads open up to roads, worlds to worlds,
but here in cells we tap and scratch
arcane vocabularies, each one more removed
from real life than the last. I do not want
to be the last monk standing when language
breaks on the rocks like the sea.
If I could find my Aspirational Target Icon
I would Open the Padlock,
Click Lunch,
Open the Door
Click Launch.

2011-08-30T12:24:00.001+01:00

Not Actually Being in Dumfries last Weekend

When I am walking up Queensberry St in low cloud
and tread on chips floating in an oily puddle,
I am actually on the Cierro Del Sol, staring through trees
at ponds like pearl, the roses and myrtle.

When I turn onto the High Street at seven o’clock at night
and neds are stoned out of their brains and jeering,
I am hearing the sound of nightingales in gardens
with the heat still singing and the sun setting on fire.

At midnight I am not leaving the Hole in the Wa,
fumbling my way through a huddle of strange dwarves,
but moving statuesquely through the lush blooms
of my imagination, heavy and sweet as jacaranda,

and the night will not end here, in light to heavy drizzle,
and a taxi that fines you a hundred quid for being sick,
it will not end here in damp sandstone and shadows
but surely with a last long kiss below an orange moon.

2011-07-28T11:43:00.001+01:00

Jet2.com

Breakfast deal,
3 cans of Stella or equivalent for ten pounds,
the perfect way to start your holiday..

By a lidless window
my face sings with heat and wine.
Outside, the red coned wing carves
through cloud boiling thirty thousand feet
above pools of black enamel.

Buy a Jet2.com scratchcard.
Helps needy children.
End up with more than you bargained for!

I’ve already got that:
the steward looks like Philip Larkin,
and Cheryl has red lips when she fans
the scratchcards and one foot poised
as if to dance on recycled air.

Imagine that,
Your dreams come true
at the very rim of space, of desire,
of consciousness
and helping needy children too.

Beer comes again to Penpont. Then goes.

2011-07-03T09:33:00.005+01:00

Gala week come and gone. Clearly rigged quiz meant that formidable team containing Jock Wallace and I had to settle for second place! Beautiful sunshine for the Gala Day itself. Unlike less classy festivals nearby there's no attempt to conjure up some fake history to justify the Gala's existence. Penpont clearly reeks of history and has no need of such inventions. When Shug Bryden and I were in London last year we saw the Map Exhibition in the British Library and the oldest Scottish map on show - from the 16th Century- only had one place name from the south west, Penpont. It was a stopping off point on the pilgrimage route to Whithorn, Kings stayed here on the Dail Righ, the Field of Kings.

The full text of MacDuff's speech to the European Parliament

2011-06-19T14:07:00.003+01:00

Hey whats this all f…ng aboot, Belgium is the most f……ng boring f………ng country in the f………ng world, smaller than my fingernail, see, eh? F………ng joke. Luxembourg, eh? There’s another f………ng joke, had the f………ng nerve to host the Eurovision f……ng song contest, no even a f……ng coastline but had a f……ng ship though, eh? Radio f……ng Luxembourg, f……ng joke, f………ng shocking, ken.

Hares

2011-06-12T09:52:00.002+01:00

Never seen them till this time last year. Appearing all the time to me now.

The Hare

Driving the pass at midnight,
emptiness rolling everywhere
like oil, we meet a hare.
Framed in the false moon of yellow light

it runs ahead of us, keeps close by
for miles through the glen,
ghostly in the car’s eye,
wild and perfect

and beyond reach. We stop at last
and watch it go, wavering still
between possibilities: the foothills
and the field of stars.

Medieval Day

2011-06-03T09:45:00.016+01:00

Apologies for being a useless blogger. Much going on, literary wise and at work. Off to New York tonight. Recently held a Medieval Day at the school, though without plague, famine, pestilence etc...Nevertheless we managed story telling, stained glass, music, archery, falconry, a hog roast, a medieval walking tour and much more.

Potato and Podcast

2011-05-07T11:28:00.005+01:00

The Workshop Exercise is ‘Write about a Potato’

When I think about a potato
I don’t think about mountains
capped in cloud or lochs
like clasps that hold the sun
or birds scratching the surface
of the sea’s dark eye
somewhere near Mull,
land where I have never
grown potatoes.

A potato is not what comes to my mind
when I think of my love,
or the laughter of my kids
as they run into the distance
in a dizzy dream of light,
and that tall glass of beer
I am working towards
with all this creative fervour
is nothing like a potato.

I don’t want to get personal,
but to me the poet organizing this
looks more and more like a potato,
but there’s no poem there,
so in the febrile landscape of life,
its agonies, its bliss
and hopeless cruelties,
we must carry on rooting,
among the potatoes.

Productive wee time. Creative Scotland were nice enough to give me a writers bursary which will enable me to finish off New and Selected, which is due in March 2012.

Anyone wanting to listen to me talking in a cupboard with Ryan Van Winkle in the latest Scottish Poetry Library podcast should link here:

Shug.

Arise Sons of the Selgovae

2011-04-25T09:18:00.008+01:00

Great recent news about successes for Dumfries and Galloway writers. Hugh Bryden's Roncadora Press has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Publishers Prize, as well as being on the Callum MacDonald shortlist for Jean Atkin's beautiful pamphlet 'Lost at Sea'. JoAnne McKay appears too for the lovely 'Venti'.

D and G has a growing list of nationally recognised writers, an imaginative and energetic new publisher, good venues, thriving writing groups, one of the best poetry festivals, and a new and ambitious magazine in Southlight.

The successes are partly down to a succession of very good literature officers, but also as a result I think of the place itself, its history, its strange mix of the wild, the agricultural and the semi-urban. Is there a homogeneous Dumfries and Galloway voice? Nope, but then there never has been. Loads of people are born here, or come here and make stuff up. Sounds good to me, and not just in terms of literature but the visual arts, music etc. We're on a roll, ladies and gentlemen. Or should I say ladies?

One problem that needs to be addressed in terms of literature, certainly poetry, is lack of men in the area, especially younger adult men, who see writing as a valid way to express themselves. They do at school, plenty of boys in 'The Kist' and the Moat Brae Anthology 'The Grass Cloud' for instance, but then they seem to stop. Wonder why? Is there a stigma? Or have we created a situation where the 'male voice', if there is such a thing, is unwelcome? Has poetry gradually become the preserve of women? I remember a poetry review where Kate Clanchy reviewed three male poets in tandem, as if they weren't individuals, but rather three parts of the same rather embarrassing and unsavoury whole.

Any hope for the 'Sons of the Selgovae'? Discuss.

Roncadora Pies

2011-04-08T09:50:00.005+01:00

Roncadora are a family firm purveying mutton pies, butteries, mince rounds and bread and butter puddings. The present board of directors, photographed here, pride themselves on providing high calorie fare for the most discerning of palates. "There isn't a waistline here under 40 inches" stated Managing Director Hugh Bryden, "apart from the Atkin girl and she's only just started. We'll soon get some lard on her."
The Roncadora Roadshow, featured recently in the St Andrews Pastry Festival, is appearing, courtesy of a specially reinforced bus, at a venue near you soon.

Attack of the Teletubbies heralds Easter Break

2011-04-05T21:22:00.003+01:00

Forget the teletubbies. Look at the mess my room is. And that's it tidy.

Stanza

2011-03-22T14:04:00.008Z

What a fine weekend! Stayed above a pub, talked amazing rubbish at the poetry breakfast, and read in the poetry cafe, to sell out crowd. Even heard someone trying to swop a ticket for somebody else in order to get in! Saw Brian Johnstone, Kevin Williamson, the bold Rab Wilson, Don Paterson. Should have seen more, but there'll next year. And Scotland won and England got gubbed!

Theosyphillis Neill lost in Libyan mission

2011-03-16T14:47:00.004Z

Concern is growing for Theosyphillis Neill who is reported missing in eastern Libya after a helicopter mission "to borrow a tenner" from anti-Gaddafi forces. A spokesman for the Government in Clatteringshaws admitted today "there has been a bit of a mix-up". It appears that in the early hours of yesterday morning, Neill, in spite of being escorted by highly trained special forces under the command of 'Tesco' Willie and Macduff, Ex-Territorial Army Cyborg Killing Machine (deceased), was apprehended by goatherds unaware of his highly sensitive diplomatic mission. "Mr Neill felt it was important to make contact with the new regime" said the spokesman, " because he already owes Gaddafi fifty quid". It is widely seen by analysts that the growth of anti government protest all over Northern Africa and the Middle East gives Neill the chance to drink all week long. Neill was last seen being bundled into a farm truck near Benghazi, shouting "I'll see you OK on Friday.

Crossroads

2011-03-12T12:55:00.002Z

Many years ago when I left University, my tutor fixed me up with a job on a newspaper in Philadelphia. Didn't go. Wonder what it would have been like?

All in All I’d Rather

When there’s traffic in my mind,
I end up in Philadelphia,
strolling in the Avenue of the Arts
with a well groomed girl,
or punching the air like Rocky
on the steps of the Rodin Museum
at the sight of another by line
from Scoop McMillan.
As I eat hoagies in the
unusually mild weather this Fall,
I watch leaves slowly drift to sea.
At this point I’m interrupted by a bum.
What is a hoagie? he asks.
And what’s it like to be on the edge
of a humid subtropical zone?
He’s drunk again, and on Wikipedia,
and soon he’ll show me, irresistibly,
pictures of his home town.

The Penpont Pub

2011-02-27T10:13:00.005Z

Now

Then

“Few things are more pleasant than a village graced with a good church, a good priest and a good pub.”

John Hillaby

By such definitions Penpont is now a poorer place. I have been told that the Leasks who own the village pub, the Volunteer Arms, have written to the village council informing it that they now do not intend to re-open the Volunteer Arms. Indeed, the pub sign has been taken down and the optimistic notice implying reopening after alterations has been replaced by a bolder one simply stating 'Closed for Business'.

The Volunteer Arms has been trading in Penpont for many hundreds of years and has always played a vital part in the life of the community. I would have made few friendships in the village if it wasn't for the pub and I am sad for others who might come to the village and not have this opportunity.

I have little idea what reasoning has led the Leasks to abandon previous commitments and promises made in print and person to reopen the pub. There are many stories of incidents, accusations and counter-accusations, but I cannot speak as to the truth of any of them. I think it would be safe to say that the Leasks' stewardship has witnessed many dramas but, more importantly, a steady leakage of support in the village. In a sense what has happened is a logical conclusion to what has gone before: the pub, it seems to me, has been closing for a long time. Perhaps the owners who are, after all, property developers with no extended experience in the hospitality trade, made a poor decision taking on the running of a village pub. I would hope they might find a buyer for it, so that it might be reopened.

In the meantime speculation is rife. The latest rumour to reach my ears is that the Vollie is to be sold to a family from Glasgow and converted to an Indian Restaurant. It's probably not true, but it would be an improvement on the current situation.

MacDuff: Death and Resurrection

2011-01-31T15:49:00.001Z

Psychic investigators and experts from the Vatican are flocking to Dalbeattie to investigate the claims that an ex-marine who died of alcoholic poisoning last week has mysteriously come back to life. 42 year old Keith MacDuff, an unemployed autocrat, was reported by reliable witnesses to have passed away last Friday. “He was stone cold deid” said John Maxwell, landscape gardener and the first on the scene. “When I forced the door of his flat I knew the smell could only mean one thing:”.

“It was a complete shock to me” said Theosyphillis Neill, itinerant thistlemilk salesman and long term friend of the deceased’s, “though I thought that MacDuff’s diet of 3 bottles of Highland Leader a day and a piece of toast was bound to get him in some kind of trouble. I was so upset that I had to borrow 20 quid from a bloke in a wheelchair.”

MacDuff, speaking this morning said, “Being dead is completely overrated. Look at me, I’m fine. I would recommend death to anyone who wants a bit of a rest. Dalbeattie’s a quiet place anyway”

The Government of Clatteringshaws has meanwhile declared a “day of rejoicing” to celebrate MacDuff’s resurrection.

Clatteringshaws celebrates the news

Up- coming Events

2011-01-23T09:13:00.003Z

Tuesday 8 February to Saturday 12 March
Roncadora Press: Words and Images
Gracefield Cafe Gallery Exhibition
Free admission

There will be three evening readings by poets published by Roncadora.

Wednesday 9 February Hugh McMillan / Graham Fulton
Wednesday 16 February Andrew Forster / Jean Atkin
Wednesday 2 March Rab Wilson / John Burns

These FREE events have been organised in partnership with dgArts. Readings will take place at 7pm in the Gracefield Café Gallery and in most cases will also mark the launch of a new pamphlet by the poet.

Hugh Bryden will also run workshops Saturday 19th February, Wednesday 9th March, Saturday 12th March. Details Gracefield 01387 262084.

Billy Collins

2011-01-22T08:07:00.001Z

Cocktail Months

2011-01-08T15:45:00.006Z

Reality bites round about this time with the return to work and fiscal challenges ahead but for those who prefer to view the situation occasionally as if through pleasant layers of gauze, might I suggest that January and February are the best cocktail months of the year? I myself have recently been experimenting and am glad to share with you my three greatest hits thus far. For these recipes I must acknowledge Kinsley Amis, a fine mentor to have in literature and drink.

1. The Polish Bison

1 generous teaspoon of bovril
a tot of Vodka- at least twice pub measure
Hot Water
a Squeeze of Lemon Juice
Pepper

This is a good hangover drink. Amis recommends it be drunk in the open air while reading Book X11 of Paradise Lost from lines 606 to the end, paying special attention to lines 624-626, "Where all life dies, death lives, and Naturebreeds,/Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,/Abominable,unutterable and worse", though this may not always be possible.

2. The Lucky Jim

3 parts Vodka
a dash of dry vermouth
1 part cucumber juice
Cucumber Slice to garnish
Ice Cubes

I found it hard to make the cucumber juice but a lemon squeezer can be used effectively. The colour of this drink, a dreamy and cloudy green, is extraordinary.

3. Milk Punch

1 part Brandy
1 part Bourbon Whiskey
4 parts milk
Dusting of Nutmeg
Frozen Milk Cubes

The difficulty here is the frozen milk cubes which have to be prepared the night before. Scotch whisky should not be used. This is a really nice drink, though I have yet to have one at the proper time: Amis recommends drinking Milk Punch immediately on rising, in lieu of breakfast, before an air trip, an interview, or the wedding of a relative.

More recommendations later after experimentation.

New Year's Night

2011-01-04T10:11:00.001Z

Grennan Hill,
New Year’s Night

From here, I can see a long way:
Night has flowered in clusters
of light so that I trace
along the dark neck of land villages
lost in grey daytime, in the seams
of mountains, the pinch of rivers,
and all the pinpricks in between,
a human constellation as queer
and sad as the sky with its
long extinguished stars.
What’s not seen is still stated,
in the shadows and gaps,
loss, and love far away.
The moon is bright and fierce
and below it there is dancing,
dead music on the breeze.

Happy Christmas Everyone

2010-12-20T12:44:00.005Z

Too Big a Part

Last night the girls got their parts in the nativity.
Lydia is reprising last season’s triumph as the
Angel of Glory, all blondeness and glitter
looming like a valkyrie over star-struck shepherds.
Jasmine is to be Mary and distraught to
be pushed into the big time so soon.
We try and reassure her. Mary is the easiest, we say,
she doesn’t speak, all she does is follow Joseph
and stand around with a baby. There’s sheep, we say,
and you get to ride the donkey, but to no avail.
Jasmine stands at the window, tears mirrored
in the fat glass, as unsure of her place in the very centre
of the puzzle as presumably that woman then, turning
in her palm over and over, the luck of the world.

Oh Little Town of Penpont

2010-12-19T16:42:00.003Z

Nativity Poem to follow nearer Christmas. Here's a pic of this morning's play. Lyd's the tallest angel, Jaz is Mary.

2010-12-12T13:44:00.000Z

In A and E

My knee and I have been here
for two hours:
I have a hankering to hide
my money in a shoe
and my bladder is nagging
but there is a strange affecting silence here,
apart from the girl calling
Mummy, Daddy, Mummy.

Perhaps I could limp to the toilet.
My zip has burst,
but who’s to see?
The corridors are sleeved in marble,
they stretch to vaults as white and cool
as the Hermitage,
though that girl is crying
Mummy, Daddy, Mummy.

Where are the health professionals?
This vast industry of making people well?
Surely my optimal waiting time has
been breached. I saw the figures
when I came in, by the room
where the girl is screaming
Mummy, Daddy, Mummy,
Mummy, Daddy, Mummy

Hurrah for Protest

2010-12-11T13:08:00.002Z

Great pictures from the Boston Globe of the demonstrations in London. This one seems to sum it all up.

Walking in the Glen

2010-12-04T16:07:00.005Z

2010-11-28T13:15:00.002Z

Just been up the glen again. Some good photies which I will post separately. It's been a busy week. Nice evening in St Mungo's Mirrorball in Glasgow on Thursday night. Read with Kona MacPhee and Brian Whittingham. A reunion of sorts of my first ever St Jo's creative writing evening class which spawned talents like Evelyne Pye and Geoff Cooper and Angus MacMillan, all of whom have their own collections now and all of whom are fine poets. Geoff and Evelyn were both there on Thursday and it was great to see them. Found a brilliant cellar that served cheap and lethal cider, too. And saw a hare on the way home in the Dalveen Pass, as Shug Bryden was kindly driving me hame.

I see Scotland on Sunday have a haiku competition to celebrate new year's day, 1/1/1

Send entries to haiku@edinburghshogmanay.com

I wrote the definitive new year haiku a few years ago, mind you.

"Scotland, New Year's Day:
two men in t-shirts converge,
to strangle each other."

Fever

2010-11-21T18:27:00.002Z

Can't shake of this bug: sure these last two poems are products of fever.

I Dreamed all Day

Clouds were embers in the morning sky.
The sun swooped like a bird
behind the tree line

on a land green as eels.
Against all prevailing inclinations
I was blown south

to a place with many people:
each step of mine broke
on their small smiles.

Night fell after that, like a drunk,
down through all the compass depths.
Only in the dark,

lights hung like silver. I stopped
the bus driver then, to make sure
your eyes were aboard.

Royal Wedding

2010-11-17T11:20:00.002Z

Hotfoot from the annual Eric Booth Moodiecliffe Memorial Lecture at the Tartan Bonnet (this year’s address was given by Keith, Ulrike Meinhof’s hairdresser, and gave us such an interesting and off-beat insight into the hairstyles of the extreme left in the 1970s), I was delighted to receive news of the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton. What a relief it will be for all those folk, unemployed or forced to work till they’re 90, on pay freezes, or faced with the shrinking of public services on all fronts, to have a fairytale royal wedding to look forward to, with perhaps even a day off work if they’re lucky to have a job by then.

Didn’t they do this to us last time, too? Giving us Charles and Diana’s wedding at the time of the Toxteth Riots? How charming that they think we’re such gormless buffoons that we’ll all fall for it. Trouble is, we will: cue endless colour supplements and programmes on the ‘People’s Prince’ with old drabs, panto queens, court correspondents, Simon Schama etc droning endlessly on.

My only connection with Prince William is a conversation reported verbatim by my niece, one of whose friends was campaigning for a post in the student union and had the temerity to approach the People’s Prince for his support while he was with his pals in a pub. “Go away you dirty badger” he cried, to an approving chorus of braying from his peers. I still don’t know what that means, but it does illustrate an important truth about these people: they might as well be from Mars, and why we waste any time thinking they’re relevant in the least to our lives or worth a single thought, unless that thought be how to get rid of them and have a independent Scottish Republic, is quite beyond me.

2010-11-05T14:46:00.002Z

Mars

Last night I was mobbed by crows,
felt like Tippi Hedren, less lovely though,
more lost. Today puddles will join together
and the world will be recast in water,
beautiful, bottomless, with a mirror view
of small clouds and aching blue.
In the meantime, I will try and wear you down
with substandard verse, look down on the town
from this long window, see wet tar
streaming all the way to Mars.

Halloween: Reprise

2010-10-31T15:10:00.003Z

Bonefire

My breath is white.
It’s wintertime:
more than weather
it’s the ghost of hunger,
small sounds in the night,
a strangling of light.

I walk through haar,
through the town’s cobbled crust,
past smeared shadow,
mirrors in green glass. As I go,
halos of lamp turn to will o’ wisp,
neon to bonefire.

Moon cracks cloud
and the clock face freezes.
I burrow in a guise
no wraith will recognise,
professional, of Dumfries,
out for an hour.

In my Apple-land
they quietly wait,
souls lost, souls gained,
finger tips on window panes.
I raise a glass to Hecate,
drink, ab ovo usque mala.

Back

2010-10-25T10:27:00.008+01:00

Back to Work, I fear. Hectic holiday in Majorca, followed by readings in Edinburgh and Stirling. Have some treats to share, particularly a video of the mini Euro-Disco Lyd and Jaz attended every night while on holiday. In the meantime, poorer fare, two poems that came out of that week.

Tuesday Night, Majorca

Fronds hung with water like rope.
The raindrops are fat and white as opals:
I see a face in them,
framed by sky the colour of iron
and shredded cloud.

It is good to be off your head
somewhere new, where even the weather
has a different slant, fast and loud
and desperate to get to ground.
No lack of words:

the sea has no end and talks long
into the night like a mother tongue.
I sit and drink and watch the rain
while my girls, happy in any migrating,
sing like birds.

Poetry Doubles, Lesbos
(After the painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema)

Alcaeus

Did you know Jimmy Hendrix pished on this lyre?
I’m behind it, hiding from those eyes of hers.
We’re in the annex of the Aesculapius Memorial Theatre
as Ovid’s got a translation of Rab Wilson next door.
No crowd in here, just some eco-poets from Santorini,
and my pal Alcetes at the back, drunk again.
Who’ll win the famous laurel wreath? Not me
with my smut: In Aphrodite’s Isle always,the girls win.

Sappho

I’m hurling love’s bolt smoking like the sea,
but he’s got a sidestep like James McFadden
and he’d sooner kiss a glass than me,
claims drink’s part of his religion.
So’s love, I say, but he’s either steaming
or singing comic songs about boats,
talking of which, I note,
the last one’s gone. In Aphrodite’s Isle always, the girls win.

Happy National Poetry Day

2010-10-07T10:26:00.002+01:00

And what better way to celebrate than with my hero, Iain Crichton Smith?

Two Girls Singing

It neither was the words nor yet the tune.
Any tune would have done and any words.
Any listener or no listener at all.
As nightingales in rocks or a child crooning
in its own world of strange awakening
or larks for no reason but themselves.
So on the bus through late November running
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles together.
and it wasn’t the words or tune. It was the singing.
It was the human sweetness in that yellow,
the unpredicted voices of our kind.

Weekend

2010-10-04T15:18:00.005+01:00

Lots of stuff at the weekend. Firstly, read at Wigtown on Friday evening to a packed house in the MacNeillie Tent which was very good. I had convinced myself no-one was coming, to the extent that I'd even cajoled Theosyphillis Neill to risk arrest by crossing the county line, but I needn't have worried cos they kept pouring in. Reading for an hour is a hard business, though. Next stop launch at the Scottish Poetry Library on Wednesday October 20th, then reading at the Stirling Centre for Poetry on the evening of the 21st, then St Mungo's Mirrorball in Glasgow on November 25th.

Also rare visit from Andrew my son who took part in the Drumlanrig Demon 10k and came a creditable second place. Sisters delighted to see him, needless to say.

Carry on Alcaeus

2010-09-20T15:14:00.005+01:00

Come, wet thy chest with wine: the dog-star now
Is rising high, the oppressive sultry glow
Of summertime brings parching thirst to all.
Now from the leaves the locust its loud call,
Its sweet shrill song, pours out from 'neath its wings.
The blazing heat, which withereth all things,
O'er all the earth is spread; the blooming thistle
Holds up its head; now womankind doth bristle
With passion most, and man is haggard worn;
For Sirius his head and limbs doth burn.

I always take Alcaeus' advice on drink which is nine times out of ten to get it down your neck, but to forbear if the state is in peril, as in his famous 'Cease Drinking, seize the rudders!" The state has not been in peril this summer and is unlikely to be through the Autumn, so that is jolly good news. The only Greek who gave me serious advice about drink told me to forbear even when the state was not in peril, but I prefer my advice to be of the ancient variety. Alcaeus was a contemporary of course of that frisky 'violet haired, pure, honey-smiling Sappho'. There they are at the top, Alcaeus fiddling as ever with his lyre and Sappho 'bristling with passion most'. They're obviously at some kind of poetry reading: you can tell this from the empty seats and the fact someone's asleep in the back row. That looks like an arts administrator just behind Sappho,too, feigning enthusiasm.

2010-09-13T10:22:00.005+01:00

The Castle

Smoke on water,
clouds and mirrors,
reeds like drowning arms.
You stir a painted toe in
the loch and light shivers,
last sparks of the summer.
It would be easy to be lost here:
we fall in and out of dreams,
and could die as easily as lose our way.
Night takes everything, you say,
and soon there is just voice, then less,
stars are sewn in gold at last,
and cold's a kiss.

Measurings

2010-09-03T09:55:00.003+01:00

Bad, bad blogger. Don't know why: work, maybe. Been writing lots as well, so that's maybe something to do with it. First of a wee run of appearances on Tuesday at Thomas Tosh in Thornhill, at 7.30 pm, then Glasgow the night after. Here's poem inspired by non-pupil day at school.

Measurings

The windows frame the blues
that bank to the horizon,
throw up hints of the beauty
welled out there and
displaced by circumstance.

So the internal view too.
Our speakers have a screen
that swims with sentences like eels,
today’s terms of reference,
but words are everywhere

like air, and turn
to dread or desire more readily
than the curriculum:
that way, the sun on old wood like blood,
and there, that girl you could love.

Life is full of ghost measurings,
the gaps between what you pretend,
and what you are,
where you’re sitting now,
and where you really ought to be.

Xiape

2010-08-20T15:26:00.002+01:00

Stone Girl

Last night the stone girl smiled at me.
She has changed since coming here,
for the better. There were stone girls to spare
once, but the few left are in garden centres
with wishing wells and fishing gnomes,
their dreams gone to ponds and pebble dash.
The rain will course from their tunics,
their faces smudge with sausage smoke.
She was on a sculpted lawn in Nunholm,
demure with her water jugs. We took
her home to stand in wild vine and lemon balm.
She took root in the bedlam.
Now ankle deep in tansy
she sloshes back from the sanctuary
with wine, her bared breast no decoration
but a carefree accident, or come-on.
Xiape, the stone girl seems to say, be
yourself like me, be free.

Edwin Morgan

2010-08-20T09:09:00.003+01:00

Sad news about Edwin Morgan, though of the dead poets this year his place in poetry is deservedly the most acknowledged and secure, and 90's not a bad age to go, is it? I liked the fact that while he was an obviously intellectual figure he didn't attempt to bamboozle or patronise his reader, one of the reasons he was so well loved by so many.

Lamps

And if anyone should tell our adventures,
remember that the universe has spaces
as well as forms- abysses, deserts, niches,
distances without even time as pedlar
to bring you, if you waited, explanations.
No, we have seen what we have seen, but often
there is a blank you must not fill with monsters.
It is all for what is to come after.
It is for the duguth of firm intent, the voyage
he and she and they must take, and you quiet
but trembling in your chair, rising, following
the light you catch, swinging but never vanishing,
into great deeps, our helmet lamps, beckoning.

Edwin Morgan

The End of (Holi) Days

2010-08-12T12:54:00.005+01:00

Oh well the sun is creeping over the hills and time is remorselessly marching towards that point when I pretend it's not the end of the holidays at all and launch myself on a desperate breenge to the magnetic north.

blind
As a restless needle held by the constant north we
always have in mind. JF Hendry

Some readings coming up, at the Wigtown Book Festival, the Conference of Librarians in Glasgow, the Saltire Society's commemorations of Willie Neill, the Scottish Potery Library in October, St Mungo's Mirrorball in November, then Stanza in March. Perhaps more important than all these is, however, the launching of Thomas Tosh's literary salon on Tuesday September 7th. Thomas Tosh is a place of exquisite refinement in Thornhill and anyone in the remote vicinity should abandon all plans to do anything else and turn on that evening to hear the award winning poet Vivien Jones, the exquisite Romford wordsmith and pamphleteer JoAnne MacKay and myself. It will be an evening that will live in memory and legend.

Poems written? Two. One about text messaging and one about the magical land between the Nith and the Scaur.

Nith Stone

Leave the world between bridges: the narrow one
across the Nith with its sentry box and the old
crossing at Scaur squatting on its Roman haunch.
There’s a shaded cup of fields between the bridges,
moss and trees darkened on every side by hills.
The royal holm is here where Bruce camped on his way
to heaven via Whithorn, and Penpont, still scratched
on maps after seven hundred years. Penpont,
an island, and The Nith Stone, totem of this pagan space.
Rain has swept the dogma from its sides
and smooth as a grape it stares from a bright clasp
of weeds, sizing up visitors and their burdens,
daring them to stay for a night here
in the blaze between the bridges,
below our thin, bright slice of moon.

2010-08-06T14:20:00.001+01:00

a girl
whose hair is yellower than
torchlight should wear no
headdress but fresh flowers

Definitions

2010-07-22T11:03:00.001+01:00

Gin-scious (adj) a fluid feeling of sublime unity with the universal continuum; n, the part of your brain open to sudden mystical experience, religious or otherwise, by the frequent use of gin eg "The ginscious mind bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world."
John Milton

Ginned (adj) The state achieved through the continued and conscious development and stimulation of the ginscious part of the mind eg "Is it not passing brave to be a King and ride ginned through Persepolis? "
Christopher Marlowe

2010-07-19T12:24:00.002+01:00

Then you walked off
and the rain began to bounce
ankle-high on cobblestones:
an opening at last
for umbrellas.

Dwam and mair dwam

2010-07-18T11:43:00.006+01:00

Completely crap blogger just now, too much in a dwam.

Popped in to the Tartan Bonnet last week to see what was happening and found the place alive with rumour and scandal as usual, all too exciting and lurid to appear in the public domain, apart from the King of Clatteringshaws appearing to be out of the closet and poor old Theosyphillis Neill being grilled by the social and having his bus pass taken off him. What a change in fortune: it doesn't seem any time at all since the man was sending taxis to collect cases of Chateau Lafite and spending a couple of grand on a night out in the Scandic Crown. Kizmuht, the Turks would say, and they are close enough to the Greeks for me to start all that again.

Reading the Magus, again.

When the wind blows
light breaks against the cypresses
and there is fire and marble,
a flame for the bull slayer
and shadows to dance the mystery.
In the temple
I take a little yellow flower
and, half embarrassed by my silliness,
leave some money by the altar,
just small coins,
but even from the car park
I see them glint from their fist of weeds,
picked out by the sun.

Romans and Greeks

2010-07-12T20:41:00.004+01:00

Hotfoot from Roman fortlet in Durisdeer, situated on Roman road north. What contrasts between drookit wee bits of the Empire like this and the bleached Greece of last week.

Graeco-Roman Culture

1.
The Acropolis, Lyndos.
Below, blue spirals between stalks of rock
and beyond, to backs of islands
inching above the lip of distance like whales.
What angles,
what spinning light to burn dreams on stone.
The men who built this dizziness
had eyes lidless, like the sun.

2.
Hardknott Pass,
quarters carved from guts of granite,
grey slate and scrim, blown like sand.
Above, clouds knot like rope,
fill the gaps between broken shafts of mountain.
These little hard men,
leaving their slough of monuments,
built no temples.
They dreamed
of anoraks..

Mythos, Muses and Mycenae

2010-07-11T17:59:00.005+01:00

Still washing the dust of the Argolid from my sandals. Some say you never get rid of it. Occasionally trips leave an impression that can't be explained properly. This one did. I'll probably get round to making it sound rubbish by writing poetry about it, but till then, Greece will just stay in my head. It's a good feeling.

tee hee

2010-07-08T10:18:00.002+01:00

It's late...but I've been away.

2010-07-07T14:31:00.003+01:00

Back from Greece. England out of the World Cup. Lots of good potery news.
So why this sadness interespersed with deranged bouts of dipsomania?

Local Pub in Algeria Slur Shock

2010-06-19T10:52:00.007+01:00

Members of the Algerian community in Penpont reacted with fury last night at the news that their flag had been banned from display at the local bistro during last night's world cup game between Algeria and England.

"This is clearly an infringement of our rights as temporary Algerians" said a community spokesman. "Dislike of the England football team is a basic human sentiment shared across the globe". "Scotland has always been a country welcoming to Algerians and many other foreigners like the English", he added.

The Algerian football team could not be contacted last night but a source close to the squad said "As soon as we heard the news about our brothers from Penpont, the boys were really fired up. I thought we had Wayne Rooney in our pocket from that moment onwards."

Concerns were being expressed this morning that members of the vast Slovenian community in Penpont may not be allowed to display their flags on Wednesday or even, should they get a result against a currently lacklustre England side, perform the ancient Slovenian gloating dance.

Ach weel never mind.

2010-06-17T10:17:00.002+01:00

We were the funniest. But that doesn't butter any parsnips.

C'mon the Auld Brig the Marra!

2010-06-15T14:57:00.004+01:00

roncadora goes to London

Poet and poet's daughter at sophisticated party

2010-06-07T20:55:00.001+01:00

Alex Berry

2010-06-07T11:58:00.007+01:00

Alex Berry was a fine poet and a very generous and entertaining companion to me in the few years I knew him. I was saddened by the news of his death and utterly shocked by newspaper reports today about what may have prompted it.

The Big Man in Dumfries

2010-05-30T11:22:00.002+01:00

Crisis in Clatteringshaws

2010-05-28T12:26:00.006+01:00

The 4th Clatteringshaws Foot and Mouth march past the Royal Sanitorium

Crisis gripped the Kingdom of Clatteringshaws yesterday after a woman tripped in the award winning Museum of Deer and sprained her ankle. Fears of a lawsuit caused a run on the Clatteringshaws Florint, prompting fears of as complete collapse of the fragile Clatteringshaws economy. "This is a disaster" said Finance Minister Theosyphillis Neill, "I have written to Angela Merkle for help, do you think you could sub me the cost of a stamp?" The cabinet met in emergency session yesterday and recriminations flew as members blamed Dean O Vaughan, Minister of Tourism, for having skimped on the cost of the original flooring in the museum. "I specifically asked for 200 year old pine to reflect the rich biodiversity of Clatteringshaws", he protested, "who put the dodgy laminate in, I don't know."

In such a crisis the King of Clatteringshaws plays a vital constitutional role. "I fully intend to follow the example of other tyrants and deflect criticism of the government by starting a war" he said this morning in a speech made from the balcony of his sanitorium, "I have therefore ordered a full scale nuclear strike on Dalbeattie". Taking the salute of the 4th Clatteringshaws Foot and Mouth on their return from peacekeeping duties in Auchinleck he announced "This is a glorious day in the history of Clatteringshaws. My troops are advancing on all fronts." "We do not know the meaning of the word prestidigitation" he added, truthfully.

The Adamhill Horror: Part One

2010-05-18T10:53:00.003+01:00

Strange calls in the middle of the night from Theosyphillis Neill demanding that I download an English translation of the Catholic ceremony of exorcism and bring it round immediately to his house in Lochside. Stumbling half asleep through the rubble strewn streets, avoiding packs of feral dogs and the bonfires round which crazed maniacs dance till dawn, I meet others summoned to the scene, Darren Vaughan and Jock ‘Maxie’ Maxwell, lapsed priests turned topiarists, and Neil ******, local porn star and Dumfries and Galloway’s most potent dog charmer. What strange fortune and diabolical circumstances have brought this dissolute company together?

Mair News

2010-05-16T21:08:00.006+01:00

No stopping the Roncadora team just now. Great news that 'Devorgilla's Bridge' a poem of mine combined with a devastating linocut by Hugh Bryden has been shortlisted for the 5 grand Michael Marks Pamphlet Prize, so the Shugs are hopefully off to the prizegiving in London on June 16th. Details here:
dev’s bridge

More good news in the pipeline....it's a secret again

On the Grass Cloud

2010-05-12T08:42:00.002+01:00

Come and celebrate a new generation of Dumfries writers in the launch of 'On the Grass Cloud' at 7.00pm May 20th at the Midsteeple in Dumfries. All proceeds go to the Moat Brae Trusts to aid their attempts to restore Moat Brae House and its gardens as a 'living memorial to the creative imagination'. Entrance free. Some refreshments. Booklets minimum donation £3.

On the Grass Cloud

The day was yellow, orange and red
a bright autumn day by
the river’s vibrant murk
Here I was a child
though my memory’s as thin as the leaves
Fall next to me on the grass cloud
breathe in the branches
and sing their song
the last colour shed from the bud
the final colours
the day’s yellow orange and red

Sophie Tonnar

Willie's Funeral

2010-05-06T10:34:00.000+01:00

Willie Neill’s Funeral

The trees were pale and bare
like fossils framed in mud,
the sun a pulse in water.
The day eked out, long,
thin as old skin
or air too high in the hills.

I held a cord:
he wasn’t heavy to my hands.
A piper played
though it was fair to say
the blackbird was better.
At funerals the poets

grow more bald and scared
of death. They eat lunch
and leave, anxious
to court life again.
I was not ashamed
to cry, not for the Makar,

too spent for tears,
for myself I suppose,
the bleed of years.

This Creative Mularky

2010-04-30T10:12:00.012+01:00

is taking over one's life. What happened to the care free days and long sunny afternoons drinking hunners of pints of guinness and worrying about nothing beyond how many goals Hibs were going to give away in the last fifteen minutes or whether Lydia's go-go hampster wasn't working because it had run out of batteries or because I'd just stood on it?

Just experienced 2 days of fevered creativity. The sort I do, of course, involving lots of stress and fuck all money.

1. The Tide Machine. You should visit this if you can. it's a crazy and original construction designed to operate as a performance space while simultaneously revealing the secrets of the universe. As you can see from the pictures, it attracted a lot of attention from wet children and fashionably dressed seafood.

2. Creativity day on Thursday at school involved me taking a small group of kids and encouraging them to write stories and poems about the tide. Not content with getting the work done by the end of the day I had the insane idea to get them to make their own books containing the work. I blame Hugh Bryden for this new and sinister instinct.

3. I also have been sewing 'Lost Gardens' on the bus, at the toilet, in my sleep.....
but the book is to be launched tamara at the Bakehouse in Gatehouse and at the Midsteeple on June 2nd. Anyone who cannot attend and wishes to get the book should contact Roncadora at roncadora or press the amended button on the top right. For God's sake add to your cart.

2010-04-28T10:34:00.003+01:00

Conspiracy

Light is lemon wrung
in slate cloud,
douce on children’s skin.
Their faces are bright
as film.
As time goes,
it’s hard to see them,
they are fast and sleek as fish.
They lurk in the hems
of eyelids with their gurgling,
lure you down
to long forgotten shirt sizes,
half remembered pain.
It is incorrigible
their endless trying
to make sense or nonsense
of everything,
the artifice of children
still conniving with the world.

Yesterday

2010-04-23T11:36:00.003+01:00

Up and coming poets. Darcy Carson in the middle, Charlotte Singleton on her right, Naomi Temple on her left

This is a young person's game and no mistake. Spent yesterday sacrificing myself on the altar of poesy.

First of all took 4 charming young women on the train to the National Gallery of Scotland where two of them- Naomi Temple and Charlotte Singleton- were receiving prizes in the ICreate Competition. All the work was read out as the paintings that inspired it were displayed. Absolutely cracking stuff. My highlights were- apart from Naomi and Charlotte- a girl from firhill Edinburgh called Annie Forbes who wrote a stunning and powerful poem about a Tiger Hunt and who won the under 15 category, and Darcy Carson from Wallace Hall who won the 16-18 category. Most of the work, if you'd read it cold, you would mistake for a very gifted and experienced adult writer's. Naomi and Charlotte's poetry can soon be seen in an anthology of poems for the Moat Brae Trust entitled 'On the Grass Cloud'. Some of the young people in this anthology will be reading their work at Dumfries Academy on the Moat Brae Open Night (6.00pm Wednesday 28th April Minerva Hall)

I then returned to see the girls back to Dumfries before embarking on another train north to the Gutter Reading at the National Library in Edinburgh. This was very entertaining, I read and caught up with some old friends like Kevin Williamson of Rebel Inc. Some drink was taken then the 11pm train to Glasgow where, after a seriously painful curry ,I eventually got to bed about 2, got up at 6 and got the train to school. Once upon a time I would have taken this mularky in my stride but I must confess to feeling today like I've been run down by a train.

Two pieces of news: The Lost Garden is out and due to be launched at the Bakehouse on May 1st and the Midsteeple on June 2nd.
and.....the other? It's most exciting but I'm afraid I'm not allowed to tell you for another two weeks.

Mongrels

2010-04-19T22:44:00.004+01:00

Following a recent poetry event I had a discussion with another poet from the Nith Valley who had spent the reading chewing the cuffs of his shirt because he thought the work being read was "not part of our culture". This followed something flattering (and probably quite untrue) that someone said at Willie's funeral and it got me thinking about whether we have a responsibility or imperative to write as part of a Scottish cultural tradition, or whether we're part of that tradition no matter what we write. I don't mean this in any narrow nationalistic way, in fact I subscribe completely to the view that Scottish poetry is at its most energetic when absorbing or reacting to different and fragmented internal influences in what someone once described as a "potent concentration of hybrid vigour". It's MacDiarmid's Caledonian Antisyzygy, or MacIllvaney's "mongrel nation" but the implication behind it is that influences are absorbed into 'Scottish' poetry and although that changes the dynamics the poetry remains identifiably Scottish. Does it? And will it always? "How many more reiki therapists from the Home Counties will it take to turn North Uist into a cultural wasteland?" a friend from Stornoway jokingly wrote recently.

People writing in Scots and Gaelic do not have this problem, of course, but those who write in English may. Especially those whose poetry is essentially mapping out an internal landscape. I'm reminded of the fact that many of his countymen choked when Dylan Thomas was described as being a 'Welsh' poet. I feel quite sensitive about this because linguistically I am one step away from Scotland's two languages (my mother was a native gaelic speaker and my father's family were miners from Auchinleck and Cumnock)but write in English.

Of course I write a lot about Scotland, its history, and my place in it. Maybe that does.

Willie Neill

2010-04-09T08:56:00.003+01:00

Sad news that Willie Neill has died. Willie was born in Prestwick and came to teaching and literature after the RAF. He wrote powerfully in the three languages of Scotland and was for as long as I can remember the pre-eminent writer in Dumfries and Galloway and one of the best, though too often unacknowledged as such, in Scotland. If we had a Makar as they do in the big cities, Willie would have been in deserved possession of the title, not that he would have prized such a thing, as he said himself.

Such macho stunts a young man often tries
to win an option on the world's approval.
When Nemesis occasions their demise
the issue's hid from them by their removal.
Take my advice, accept the worst of bosses,
stick to the farm, the office, cut your losses.
Posthumous gongs are hardly worth the wearing.
In Hades, the pale phantom's past all caring.

Willie's was a great support to me when I started writing and he will be sadly missed by many. His funeral is in Castle Douglas on Tuesday 13th.

Abnormal Phenomena

2010-03-27T10:53:00.006Z

A Rab Wilson over St Andrews

I am perturbed to note that the British Government is cutting the budget of the Department devoted to investigating paranormal activity, especially in the light of the recent rash of Rab Wison sightings.

The proliferation of Rab Wilsons is one of the great unexplained phenomena of recent times. Typically appearing in or near literary festivals, Rab Wilsons have been explained away as weather balloons but the resemblance is superficial.

Seamus Heaney recently described a close encounter:

"I was appearing at a prominent poetry festival when I began to get an eery feeling that I was being watched. I withdrew to the toilet and was shocked to find, when I opened the soap dish, Rab Wilson hidden inside. Running from the room my fear and amazement were further compounded when I saw Dennis O Driscoll with a Rab Wilson attached to each trouser leg. I am now scared to leave my house."

The origins of this phenomenon are vague but it is thought that Rab Wilson was a writer, originally.

MacDuff: An Update

2010-03-24T11:18:00.004Z

The Kingdom of Clatteringshaws, seen from the Royal Blimp

It is time to address the concerns of the many people who are in daily contact on the subject of MacDuff, King and Spiritual Leader of the semi-autonomous mountainous region of Clatteringshaws. I last wrote of his exploits, you may recall, after his audacious plan to walk 4,6oo miles round the world equipped only with a child's play tent and a box of oxo cubes ended in disgrace and acrimony. The contest between macDuff and his acquaintance Sid, designed to prove who was the most deranged and emaciated ex-serviceman at that time in Dumfries and Galloway, ended, predictably, in a draw after both contestants passed out due to a combination of hunger and delerium tremens near Moffat. Macduff, if you remember the press coverage at the time, was repatriated by the 1st Batallion Semi-Automatic (Hand Wash Only) Garden Refuse Recycling Unit of the Clatteringshaws Militia, while Sid disappeared into the southern uplands pursued by the CID.

I am overjoyed to tell you, however, that after a short period in a secure nursing home in Dalbeattie, macduff has made a full recovery and is now back in his kingdom where he is currently undergoing a rigorous royal tour of the local bayous and sheep pens.

I wish I had such good news about Theosyphillis Neill, a man who is slowly evolving into the subject of some Hogarthian print about the perils of contaminated gin. Neill is now scarcely recognisable as the handsome rake who piloted the first Thistlemilk barge into the port of Drumsleet 120 years ago. Years of poverty, broken bones and bad luck have taken their toll. To make matters worse his cooker has exploded, meaning that he cannot even make tripe for himself and Terry, his cocker spaniel.

I am therefore beginning, as of today, a charity relief fund for the support of this wretched fellow and hope you will support this in the same spirit of benevolence and generosity which you showed when recently donating the sum of 18p and 3 pfennigs to me to finance my visit to Columbia.

Thank you in anticipation.

Breaking News: Neill awarded Emergency Needs Grant by Parish Council! two weeks to drink like fuck before worrying about the cooker.

Shug at Aye Write

2010-03-19T09:17:00.002Z

A wee video showing part of the reading at Aye Write. I'm at the end after the real writers.

Shug hamming it up at Aye Write

Busy

2010-03-17T12:32:00.002Z

Very busy just noo. Resurrecting old poems, trying to finish Part 3 of Mac the Rabbit and plotting world conquest in the Autumn. Oh aye, and my work.

Went to 'Aye Write' a few weekends ago and read a poem at the Adrian Mitchell event before attending the Gutter launch on Saturday night. Went up with the very generous Mr and Mrs Titus. Good meeting some old weel kent faces and finding some new ones. Went back up on Sunday for the launch of Best Scottish poems 2009 which was very enjoyable, as was the Mitchell Library's Hospitality suite, the Green Room.

best Scottish pomes 2009

Only drawback was the last train from Glasgow Central, sodium yellow lighting, hot air belching from hidden blast furnaces and, of course, a male voice choir from south Ayrshire singing some trad songs about being up to their oxters in fenian blood.

Nebelgard Girl

2010-03-12T14:54:00.002Z

Nebelgard Girl

I shone the iron wheels of her cart
as she bathed in the mere
with long necked birds.

My sisters necklaced me with samphire,
twisted tansy in my hair.
They sighed when they saw my breasts
just budded, but

my skin will not be jowled or scarred.
look at me as I leave my hearth,
smell the broom on my breath,
I will be the mother

no man has forced.
Mark it! When I am gone
flowers will seep through the earth like milk.

Rooting

2010-03-02T13:51:00.004Z

I'm rooting through my old stuff to try and select the best for a volume later in the year. Here's a poem about Jane from 'Horridge'.

Ideal Homes

You keep the Subaru,
compact as yourself,
white as the knuckles on the wheel,
snouting south over the Corinth Canal,
through the bleached bones of Greece.
I look into your eyes,
beyond the reflection of that farm truck
with brake problems.

Three days ago in the Cyclades
a huge sun sank on cue
and a breeze carrying all the hot bubble
of the Peloponnese fanned my cheek,
and I thought yes this is the place,
but now I look into your face
I see a darker climate,
but I am disposed to live there,
with all its squalls.

From roughly the same time, in response to Rachel's request, a poem by Jane. Jane was published in quite a few places, then got scunnered. Don't know why.

Four Seasons in the Blue Room

Let me breathe your name
like a sigh,
on nights when the moon
hangs like a tiny ear,
and the wind whoops
above our bed,
and the only way to go is up
out of the window:
dance in air.

Here I have fingered treasures:
smelt your skin like good food,
kissed the rose coloured lips,
moved under your careful hands.

Everything began on a night like this.
Today was warm on my cheek
like a familiar breath saying
open, come,
and suddenly that night,
when I knew I'd touched something amazing,
seemed no further away
than that breath
and those hushed words.

Stuart A Paterson

2010-02-21T10:22:00.003Z

A plug here for Stuart A Paterson, Ayrshire born poet, who in the halcyon days of the 90s was Writer in Residence in Dumfries before emigrating to Manchester and a regular very demanding job. This relocation seemed to have the effect of nobbling his output. Stuart was, and is, a great friend of mine - I declare a partiality there- but the facts about his wrIting speak for themselves.

Stuart before moving south had already established himself as an important talent. He was a Gregory Award winner, a holder of a Scottish Arts Council Bursary, and possibly the most interesting contributor to the very important 'Dream State', Donny O Rourke's anthology of young Scottish writing. He also co-edited with Gerry Cambridge (current editor of the Dark Horse)the influential magazine 'Spectrum' which published all the big names of the time.

When his collection 'Saving Graces' was published by DieHard it seemed just the start to a big publishing career. Events intervened, however. The romantic notion of a Scottish exile is someone whose sense of country or place is of such integral importance that his identity in any other place is incomplete. I have a sense that Stuart's idea of his own poetical identity suffered in the south. He settled, typically, in an area of exile- Levenshulme, the Irish district of Manchester. The poetry seemed to dry up.

I don't want to carry on as if he's dead- he's very much alive and was slevering over the phone to me just the other night- but in a way that was obvious to me, and I suspect to him, part of him seemed to have slipped away. This was more than a shame: Stuart was my idea of a natural poet, not some superannuated bursary grabber or palm warmer, but someone who was more happy scribbling verse on the back of his rail ticket on the way to Oban than at any fancy antholgy launch or reading.

So it is a pleasure to hear that he's putting a new collection together, much of it gritty stuff based on his experience working in childrens' homes down south. He's also showcasing his poetry at:
Stuart A Paterson

Here's a glimpse of this new work:

There

Outside it's Manchester, as usual,

with you & half a million others sleeping

cold away. In here it's you as well,

on a screen, just your name that's keeping

me from seeing if I can get

to Whalley Range before the light slinks in

and lose my job & scare you half to death.

Six letters on a monitor, that's all

two syllables and you would think that I

might make it through a single night without

recourse to poems or phones or photographs.

Love isn't like that, is it? Love's the time

like air between two pairs of lips,

decreasing, heating to a point

where time is only ever this. A kiss.

It's cold outside in Manchester as usual where

it's you who keeps me here by being there.

http://stuartapaterson.webs.com/

The Lost Garden Pre-Publication Offer

2010-02-15T18:46:00.003Z

Book's at the printers. Now comes the sewing!
Pre publication offer at:

Lost Garden

The Lost Garden: A most beautiful book of poems. Coming Soon

2010-02-10T14:16:00.003Z

Cmon Now

2010-02-03T13:08:00.007Z

Right, that's it. Had enough. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly but I need to go to this place immediately. It's called Cartaegena des Indias, and it's in Columbia. I'm going to cash in all my shares in Theosyphillis Neill's Thistlemilk Company (loveyourliverlikestevie.com) . I'll get 26p from these and, say, £14 for the next 20 years worth of poetry earnings, so I calculate I still need about £249,885.74 to live there comfortably with my family for the next 20 years. So please start sending me money immediately. I can wait till the end of next week, but that's it OK? Come on now. Hurry up, times wearing on. No excuses. Get your coats on.

The Quest

2010-02-01T12:07:00.002Z

Not very fecund just now, I'm afraid. Just back from a weekend with 78 weans in St Andrews and everytime I look at a computer screen or a blank page all I see is rabbits. I've left Mac the rabbit up against the side of a cave about to be devoured by a zombie and do not have the energy to rescue him just yet. I do think, in order to save myself from another sequel, that the entire cast list should be slaughtered by the last chapter. This is a tactic I adopted once before in the great unpublished novel where all the protaginists fall down a mineshaft in the last chapter.

I was thinking the other day of the exact point when you stop/give up on a piece and decide it's either finished or unfinishable. Is there such a moment? In the answer to another post I was remembering a teacher at my old school who was, I think, a poet of outstanding quality, but who was obsessed with perfection to the extent that he became stuck on a single poem for years and ultimately stopped writing because that degree of perfection eluded him. When do you call a stop? Or do you?

Guid News

2010-01-21T14:10:00.002Z

Just been told that 'Lochinver', that poem about Jane finding a cache of bank statements I'd buried in the garden - it was in 'Postcards from the Hedge' by the increasingly sexy and famous Roncadora Press -has been selected by Andrew Greig as one of the twenty 'Best Scottish Poems of 2009', to be published in the annual anthology by the Scottish Poetry Library.

'Old Photograph' was chosen for the 2006 one, ye can see it here:

http://www.spl.org.uk/best-poems_2006/mcmillan.htm

More on JMB

2010-01-18T12:17:00.007Z

Moat Brae House Interior

Moat Brae House Exterior

The Moat Brae Garden a short time ago

I gave a talk on JM Barrie on Saturday. Some of you will know that there has been a controversy in Dumfries about Moat Brae House, a beautiful piece of Georgian architecture which had been left in such a parlous state that the local housing association that had lately bought it declared that it had to be demolished. There followed selected outrage, the founding of a trust to buy the property and hopefully restore it to splendour. The literary connection with the building was that in Barrie's time at Dumfries Academy which is next door to the property, he and his mates used to play in the Moat Brae garden, an experience he directly links to the literary origins of Peter Pan. It's a link he stated unambiguously in a speech in 1924:

"When the shades of night began to fall, certain young mathematicians shed their triangles, crept up walls and down trees, and became pirates in a sort of odyssey that long afterwards was to become the play Peter Pan. For our escapades in a certain Dumfries Garden, which is an enchanted land to me, were certainly the genesis of that nefarious work.”

Barrie in fact wrote his first work while at school, a 100,000 word novel called 'A Child of Nature' which he later ripped up. He drew inspiration from the local bookshop where he read Fennimore Cooper, RM Ballantyne, as well as 'penny dreadfuls' , lurid tales of adventure like 'Spring Heeled Jack'. He also got involved in the theatre, attending the local Theatre Royal, and founding a drama club in the school. I think one of the things about Dumfries was it was an exciting literary environment: It wasn't just the Burns legacy; Barrie used to pass Thomas Carlyle, then acclaimed as one of the best literary talents in the world, as the latter visited his sister in Hill House opposite Barrie's home; and the uncle of one of Barrie's best friends, James Anderson, captain of the SS Great Eastern, the largest ship afloat, had just been the subject of a story by Ballantyne.

I was arguing that the Barrie legacy could be commemorated in a more exciting way than just a museum, though that of course could play a part. Since a world class creative imagination was born here- an imagination that encompassed timeless and dark themes that still grip adults and kids alike- I think any reconstruction of Moat Brae should include some kind of living celebration of the young creative instinct- a space for children to play, to write...A Barrie festival, a Barrie writing Fellow...the possibilities are endless.Of course it will take dosh.

As part of my pitch I showed the trustees some pieces of pupils' work inspired by Barrie themes. I reproduce two of them here, with their authors' permission.

On the theme of Neverland:

Snowed In

Recently we’ve been captured
held hostage by snow
away from biros and dull monotony
dressed up as work.

In leggings shirts and scarves
we shirk in Neverland,
white as a flickering screen
a blank page that cries adventure

then reality calls a mutiny
the snow melts,
we’re chased back to life
where we’re all lost children

terrorised by the ticking crocodile.

Charlotte Singleton

On the Theme of the Boy who Wouldn’t Grow Up

Young Forever

Forever young, forever free,
a dream come true for only me.
I never tire
no aches or pains
fighting pirates, playing games.
Chasing injuns, firing guns,
living free, no dads or mums
ordering my fate
shouting if I come in late.

At time I tire and only wish
I had someone to do all this,
to care for me or hold my hand
when I lose a friend to a pirate gang.
One true thing that’s always been,
is nothing is as it seems:
forever young, forever free.
that’s the curse that’s laid on me.

Naomi Temple

Icy New Year

2010-01-06T13:31:00.007Z

Having bravely battled through the icy wastes to work today I was met by a bedraggled but jubilant knot of weans telling me that the school was shut, so here I am till Friday at least. It is beautiful, though. Happy New Year, by the way.

Santa in Penpont

2009-12-24T20:00:00.003Z

Happy Christmas everyone XXXXX

Snaw

2009-12-22T16:44:00.008Z

Some winter images.....will return on Christmas Eve with some thoughts. If Titus brings the rhubarb gin they may not be coherent but no change there.

Hey I've got colour! And I've coloured in the Christmas Tree poem.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-18T10:56:00.006Z

After
a month of
waiting, and a week
staring out the window
the village tree is lit,
lights wound and wound
like toilet rolls for flooded noses.
Now Christmas is here the nights grow
long as laminate (a DIY Christmas joke there)
and though robin’s rocked, Santa’s
still to come, on his tractor first,
then later
with the
goods.
The wonder of Christmas?
The turning of their years,
Their stalking of time.

Mac The Rabbit

2009-12-11T11:57:00.006Z

Heid down working on Mac2, sequel to my Best Seller 'Mac the Rabbit'. All proceeds to Mossburn Animal Centre. Buy a copy when it's out in May- all money to a good cause.

"Mac could hear the sound of someone or something on the road. It was not footsteps he heard exactly, but a shuffling movement. He squinted through the roots and could see a shape at the edge of his vision. It was passing through the wood at the other side of the path, not walking but moving, like in mid air. Mac felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise."

Mac The Rabbit

Must be Santa

2009-12-07T14:43:00.000Z

Happy St Andrew's Day

2009-11-30T09:57:00.003Z

And a sharp sunny morning it is, too. Good wishes to you all, and here is the Illustrated Spider if you haven't already seen it.

Home Time

2009-11-27T19:40:00.008Z

Looking at Mull in December

Night swallows a last
Silhouette, rigged with web
and running for home.
I sit in the rain:
my coat is two hundred miles away
but my mind's eye is rolling along the ocean
like a pinball,
lighting jackpot after jackpot after jackpot.

I should have been on my annual pilgrimage to Mull this weekend but circumstances have intervened. It’s a priority to make a visit there at least once a year so some thought will have to be given to a last minute breenge in December, against the elements. Mull is the spiritual home, you see, a place of power. Of course you have to ignore the fact that it’s full of folk from Kent, and that the main town Tobermory has airs and graces but there is such staggering beauty in the place, such scope for dreaming. We left my mother there, and there she still is, of course.

A Leaving

Branches cup their shreds of leaves,
there's a wall translated into moss
and two glens, one chipped into the stone
blue sky and sloping east to a dwam of light
like water, the other eery, unbroken
on the loch, though in the wind
the mountains shudder down to my shoes.

In such times it is difficult to see
the start and end of things, which is as well.
This morning I am leaving her on Mull,
as I have done before, only this time
she is scattering through the trees
and the soil and the somersaulting water,
so from now on, no matter the weather,
the island will speak in only one gentle voice.

It reeks of history, of course. The stone circles, the castles, Loch Scridain where the MacLeans anchored their war galleys.

But the main thing to me is the connections, and maybe because of them, strange things have happened to me here over the years. Landslides, love affairs, pitched battles….. and there are lost poems, of course.

Lost Poems

I have come back to Mull
for the poems that were lost here;
overboard from the Lochinvar,
buried in landslips,
left in telephone boxes,
torn to pieces and
somersaulting in the wind.
I am in sore need of them now,
for they were born of bright agonies
before they slipped away:
death, love, betrayal.
All these years
they have been dancing on the shore
perfect as little fawns.
I will set foot in Mull tonight
and they will be waiting for me
by the tree-line at twilight,
wearing the faces I had,
dark, fine and hard.

Near Fionnphort Mary of the Songs is buried. Mary MacDonald wrote "Leanabh an Aigh", the Christmas Hymn 'Child in a Manger', to an old Gaelic tune which she called 'Bunessan'. Poetry, then as now, brought no living so she made an income by making illicit whisky and smuggling it to Rathlin Island off the coast of Ireland.
We were going to the Keel Row in Fionnphort, maybe to do a surprise poetry reading, the type that worked so well last year at the Oban Inn, and failed to work well at the Mishnish,or maybe just to drink and listen to the sea.

Never mind, I'll get there. How could I not? It's like going home.

Going Home

I'm juddering through arteries of rock.
Going home is more than geography:
It's tracing the outline of a well loved face
with the fingers, again, of a child.

Water threads the scalp of hills
and soon we'll tip down to Oban
where the boats are set like buttons
on the belly of the bay
and every pavement used to lead to jam
or little fists of shingle where you could skim
a stone all the way, it seemed, to Kerrera

and where the Columba came
bringing back the half drowned
with their sodden duffle coats
and scarves like pennants home to the warm,
butting in that lst mile through the Sound
while clouds closed like eyelids over stars
and a piper faint as a gull in the roar of the night
played us home, over all the muscles of the sea.

Mr Chips

2009-11-18T10:08:00.007Z

As the rain slowly drips off the eaves and the wind slaps the windaes I find myself in reflective mood at midnight here in the village. Normally this would result in my reaching for the Bowmore but given my efficacious regime of 4 days off/3 days on and since this is only Tuesday, I make myself a camomile tea instead and sip it, pausing only now and again to think how minging it is.

There are many topics to think upon, of course, swine flu, Hibs splitting the Old Firm, Lydia's 5th Santa letter (this week) and so on, but the greatest of these of course, and the one that pushes to the surface at this silent time of night, is our place in the universe and, as Gerald Manley Hopkins would say, 'the doom that man was born for'.

Thinking about this kind of stuff with a clear mind unfettered by fine malt whisky brings no more clarity and satisfaction, actually, than thinking about it after a good session in the Tartan Bunnet. There are more questions than answers as that old Bodhisattva Johnny Nash used to say.

In the course of this self-indulgence, however, I suddenly realised that I had missed an important anniversary, for October 2009 marked my 30th year of service with Dumfries and Galloway Regional Council as District Pedagogue. Not continuous service (for I took a year off in the mid nineties to die) but 30 years nonetheless. I have a feeling this anniversary should be marked in some way, perhaps by public subscription or a small statue. But I suppose there is acknowledgement enough in the unerring and touching gratitude of all the young people who have undergone my tutelage.

This was brought home to me one day when I was standing in the Prancing Pensioner and noticed what I can only describe as a rough type standing at the other end of the bar. He was swarthy, scarred, and was, disconcertingly, carrying what appeared to be a dead chicken. The unwritten law is if you catch the eye of a nutjob or passing psycopath he will suck out your marrow, but while I was staring conscientiously at a beermat a fresh pint was pushed across by the barman, bought by this stranger and I was forced to raise my eyes. "Remember me?" he said, his face cracking into a louche kind of smile, "You taught me at Maxwelltown High School. You were a useless c... but we liked you."

Recollections like this, so reminiscent of that excellent film Goodbye Mr Chips starring Mr Robert Donat, almost bring a tear to my eye.

2009-11-10T15:27:00.002Z

Field of Stones

By the river’s brown belch Jasmine
finds the whitest stone ever seen.
It’s opaque though veins and seams
glow with light and hidden streams
of colour. ‘It’s wet, that’s why it shines’.
I zip it up and later put all the day’s stones,
like ‘the snake’ and the ‘good writer’ on the cairns
at our backdoor. I try and remember the names,
but already many of the older piles,
each nugget a cipher for a field of time,
are lost, or as inscrutable as the lines
of Nazca. Who shall puzzle how they align,
the choice of shapes, how they incline
to the setting sun? Only I will, for a while.

Anorak Weather

2009-11-01T10:09:00.007Z

Since the sad demise of the great Harry Chamber's Peterloo Poets, I have inherited the remaining stock of 'Aphrodite's Anorak'. Anyone wishing to get their mitts on one- not you, Rachel, you get a freebie- please press the button on the right. It includes poems like 'Surprise Attacks', which is the poem I read at Jane's dad's funeral last week.

Surprise Attacks

I hear the sound of a boy
waiting to be ambushed
by his father,
that carpet of smells and roars
like a bear, all hugs and stubble.
Each step breaks on the stairs like ice
and it precedes him, this excitement,
like a shadow mad and off its moorings.
Oh should we not weep
for the ghosts of undiluted joy
and the years I cannot wish for him
but he is eager, all fists for.

It is a long minute.
He is stopped, poised on one leg
like a crane.
Perhaps he will be a dancer
or a poet
it doesn't matter.
Whether he requires it for his art or not
he will be ambushed by his father,
from the tips of pencils
the precipitation of sleep
he will be ambushed by his father,
when he is old and threadbare
and sick of such surprises,
even then
he will be ambushed by his father.

Proof at Last

2009-10-23T13:52:00.004+01:00

Brilliant programme on radio 4 yesterday with Melvin Bragg discussing the geological formation of Britain. Answered a few questions.

Proof At Last

It’s in the rock record,
but we could have guessed.
Years ago, balmy Scotland
hugged the equator,
golden beaches, lush forests,
coconuts, bars on stilts,
beach volleyball, then one day
earth’s orbit tipped to an ellipse,
plates shifted, the oceans shut,
and on that flimsy pretext
England came hurling up
from its place in the Antarctic
and slammed us with its icy spine
into the North Atlantic,
shunted right up the sheuch
of Iceland with all the ensuing
mountains, herring, sleet,
Sundays, words like sheuch…
That’s it. No need for further talk.
At last, it’s proved, it’s all their fault.

Last minute effort at the TFE Challenge

2009-10-19T11:43:00.002+01:00

Ghastly week, but Sylvia's cheery ditty did provide some food for thought. No title, yet, I'm afraid.

A week spent in the wake of disease,
and the efforts to repel its boarding
then ease its way when all was lost:
the comfort, that he lived a long time
and lived for others. Now I muse
on those who flirt prettily with life
and death, have kids and all the rest
while archiving full time in their heads
the past attempts to top themselves
and relishing with sexy glee the next
successful go. Self indulgence doesn’t
cover it, nor any art excuse it.
It's chaos and fire.
There’s nothing to admire.

2009-10-16T21:33:00.006+01:00

A beautiful day, a day for dragging weans throught the woods, for wetting feet, for finding sticks and stones.

Balloon Man

2009-10-12T08:17:00.003+01:00

Thought I'd join in TFE's weekly challenge.

The Balloon Man

This is no ordinary man.
His head is the eye of a flower.
He is held between the fact
of pavement and the fantasy of helium,
between the cash in hand
and the need to let go,
between the inhuman sheen of polyester,
and a dripping nose, no hand for hankies.
More than that, though, he is cursed.
His message is implacable.
For ten pounds he will divine your lives:
the hours bumping against a ceiling,
the long years shrivelled and burst.
At night when the streets are tar black
he will float home on a bubble of gas,
and spend the time you’re asleep
making thousands of thin smiles.

Pottery Frenzy

2009-10-05T21:05:00.009+01:00

A period of strange and uncharacteristic activity over the next week in the pottery field for the self effacing bard of Park View:

Firstly the bard Shug will appear at Wallace Hall Academy on Wednesday morning in three workshops with weans.

Then Thursday 8th October is National Poetry Day, or Notional Poetry Day as I prefer to call it, in which a galaxy of stars will appear at the Poetry Porch in the Midsteeple.The bard Shug is favoured to be one of the 8 poets chosen (others include Norman McCaig and Jackie Kay) to represent the theme 'Heroes and Heroines' in a series of poetry postcards issued by the Scottish Poetry Library. So Shug's spider will be ubiquitous. He will also appear in the National Library of Scotland's website on NPD with some of the poems from Postcards from the Hedge.

On Friday night, 9th October, the bard Shug will be in Montrose reading with Raymond Vettese in a gig arranged by the brilliant Rachel Fox at the Links Hotel. 7.30 kick off.

Then on Monday 12th October he will appear in Poetry Doubles with the excellent Imtiaz Dharker in the Robert Burns Centre in Dumfries starting 7.00pm.

Round about 10 in the evening of the 12th October the bard Shug will then disappear, like Brigadoon, for another 100 years.

Paddy Kelly and the Banjo Tree

2009-10-02T13:52:00.002+01:00

Paddy Kelly and the Banjo Tree

Paddy Kelly, sent oan an eerant
by his auld Mither,
wastit a the cash oan lager
an when he wis plaistert
stummled oan a banjo,
takt it hame, gey prood o himsel.
His ma leathered him.
Whit de ye think yer dain
saunterin back here bluitert wi a banjo
ye saucie gowk, an a the siller gan?
Couped it richt oot the windae.
Next day whit do ye think
but a big braw magic banjo tree?
Paddie’d tak a new yin every day
and strum a the way tae the village:
he didnae hae tae be fu tae play it,
but awbody else had tae be
tae thole listenin,
so the hale toon’s economy was sauft.

Peter Pan

2009-09-25T14:17:00.001+01:00

Peter Pan

There’s a picture of him,
moustache at half mast
like Neville Chamberlain’s,
tiny man in a flasher’s coat
with a St Bernard’s, Nana
you presume, waist high.
He’s half turned as though he knew
the camera, like life, was unkind
and found only gravity in his face
now, the jowls, the joyless lips,
the eyes dead as space.
He said to clap if you believe,
but this was after Flanders
and Neverland had taken
all the pure and heartless.
What was left was Jim.

Ghost Story

2009-09-20T10:55:00.001+01:00

Ghost Story

Down an alley telling tales
to 12 year olds. They gasp,
scan the shadows for body parts,
and horses come from hell

(of course it’s lies,
no children were murdered here
and made into pies).

“Later when you go past,
you might feel a hand
plucking at your sleeve” and
see in the smudge of glass

a small child, moon eyed,
the image of yourself,
that year, that night,
so rapt and so alive

(it’s sad but true,
the only haunting here’s
by you).